David Brinkley signs off

David Brinkley once said TV journalists simply find out what's happening and tell what they've seen. In his fourth book, completed shortly before his death in June, Brinkley does more: he also tells us what he was thinking. Brinkley's Beat: People, Places and Events That Shaped My Time, eschews any chronological inclination and, in grab-bag style, shares observations and opinions on...

On the edge of extinction

We are horrified when a crocodile snatches and devours a baby or a dog. Determined to teach the beast a lesson for violating our sense of decency, we hunt for it with the intent of imposing the ultimate penalty. Such scenarios might someday cease thanks to what naturalists view as an equally alarming prospect: the very extinction of some of Earth's most fearsome, carnivorous animals. In ...

Unraveling the threads of a tragic fire

Its owner was correct when he said the 10-story Asch Building in downtown Manhattan was fireproof. The problem was that its contents were not. Thus, the cloth and paper used on the top three floors by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company's garment workers fed the March 25, 1911, fire that resulted in the deaths of 146 people, the worst workplace disaster in New York City's history before that...

In the 1990s, most Americans had never heard of Bosnia, didn't know a Croat from a Serb and couldn't locate Yugoslavia on a map, even though Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing a euphemism for state-sponsored genocide had produced the bloodiest European conflict since World War II. The mounting casualties were humiliating to leaders of the West, particularly to President Clinton, who in his...